


The Oldest Game

by DesireeArmfeldt



Category: Hard Core Logo (1996)
Genre: Bullying, Canon Typical Swearing, Childhood, Childhood Friends, POV Third Person Limited, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2021-02-26 21:53:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21825964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesireeArmfeldt/pseuds/DesireeArmfeldt
Summary: Billy and Joe played a lot of games together over the years.  This was the first one.
Comments: 9
Kudos: 19
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	The Oldest Game

**Author's Note:**

  * For [feroxargentea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/feroxargentea/gifts).



> Can be read as gen or slash, as the reader chooses.

It was the first game they made up, Billy and Joe. _Where's Billy?_

Grade Three, thirty kids tossed out into the great outdoors, namely, the park by the 'lake,' a former quarry now full of slime and dead fish, so they could play Capture the Flag while Mr. Hill smoked by the water and pretended to give a crap about physical education. Billy was the smallest kid in the class and not much of a runner, but he also didn’t give a shit about the game, and unlike Red Rover or Dodgeball or most of the other school-sanctioned opportunities for the jocks to beat the snot out of everyone else, in Capture the Flag you could mostly just wander around in the woods and keep out of everyone’s way. Which is what he was doing when he ran across Joe Mulgrew trying to carve. . .something. . .into a tree with a Swiss Army knife. Billy couldn’t figure out what it was supposed to be, but it was big.

“You’re going to break it if you keep prying it in there like that,” said Billy from a cautious several strides away.

Joe lifted his free hand over his shoulder and gave him the finger without even turning his head. He twisted the knife again and sure enough, the blade snapped. The recoil jerked his hand back so hard he hit himself in the mouth.

Billy snickered. Joe turned around and grinned at him. His lip was bleeding; the blood trickled down his chin and stained his lower teeth, which was kind of gross and kind of cool. Then he stuck out his tongue and licked his lips like it tasted really good.

“What were you trying to make?” Billy asked.

“Told you already, weren’t you paying attention?” Joe gave Billy the finger again, then started waggling it like a finger puppet until they both cracked up.

Then someone yelled, “Get him!” and three kids came barreling down the hill towards them. Marcus and Dave and Sarah—were they on his team? Billy couldn’t remember, it wasn’t like he’d been paying attention. Joe wasn’t running, but he couldn’t remember if Joe was on his team, either, and Joe probably wouldn’t run in any case—and then they were almost on top of him.

Billy had never understood that whole thing about deer freezing in headlights. Or was it rabbits? Except now he got it, because instead of running like a normal person would—even though they would have caught him in, like, three seconds—he froze, hugging his hands to his chest and squeezing his eyes shut. He wasn’t thinking; he didn’t have time to think. He just _hid_ , like a dumb animal, in plain sight.

 _Wham!_ Someone slammed into him, and he was on his face in the pine needles, the bigger kid’s weight grinding him down. A rock mashed his lip into his tooth; he tasted dirt and blood.

“You didn’t have to paste him,” Sarah said from somewhere up there above him. “He wasn’t even running.”

“Too dumb to run,” Dave said, getting off of Billy. The three of them laughed as he hauled Billy to his feet. “C’mon, dumb bunny, you have to go to jail now.”

“It’s a waste of time for one of us to take him there,” Marcus complained. “It’s not like he’s gonna do anything useful for his team anyway.”

“You take him,” Sarah told Joe in a kind of bored, disgusted tone that meant she thought Joe wasn’t good for anything else either. Joe gave her the finger, and Billy tensed for both of them to get beat up for real, but she was already running with Dave and Marcus close behind, chasing the flash of a white shirt that was some other kid making a break through the clearing past the three big boulders.

Joe was leaning against the tree, grinning at Billy.

“Bunch of cunts,” he said. That was a worse word than Billy had heard anyone say in real life, certainly not a kid. Joe was obviously trying to say it casually, like it was no big deal, but he didn’t quite pull it off. “You done making like Wile E. Coyote?”

Billy scrubbed at his face with the side of his hand, probably making it dirtier instead of cleaner, but at least it meant Joe probably couldn’t see how close he was to crying. 

"What'd you think you were invisible?" Joe asked. "Close your eyes, no one can see you?"

“Yeah, I'm magic.” He tried to make his voice drip with sarcasm like as he held up his hands like chipmunk paws and scrunched his eyes shut like it was a big dumb joke. “Watch me disappear.”

“Holy crap,” he heard Joe say in an awestruck voice. “Where'd he go? Billy? Are you there? Hey, anybody seen Billy?”

Billy opened his eyes, ready to launch himself at Joe, punch him, shove him, anything—but Joe smiled, not mean or teasing, just a big happy smile.

“Hey, there you are!” he said. “Phew, you just disappeared, I was worried about you. Where did you go?”

He had to be teasing. Joe was never nice to anybody; Joe didn’t _like_ anybody. Joe had blood on his chin from punching himself in the face and Billy was probably bloody too, like his mirror image only blonder and dirtier.

“I was time-traveling,” Billy blurted out like an idiot. It was the first thing he could think of.

Joe didn't laugh, though. He screwed up his face like he was concentrating. "You mean. . .like this??

And he shut his eyes and held up his hands like paws and stood really still.

"Hey, where'd you go?" said Billy tentatively, feeling dumb. "Joe? Shit, where'd Joe go?"

Joe's eyes popped open and he grinned like Billy had done something amazing.

* * *

They didn’t play it in front of other people. At least, not in front of anyone who was paying any damn attention. Not that they ever made a rule about it—not that they ever talked about the game at all, in fact. That was the whole beauty of it. They didn’t need to talk about it. It was just a thing they did. Someone freezes in the blind-chipmunk pose; the other guy notices he’s gone and looks around for him, makes a fuss: _Hey, where’d he go? Where’s Joe? Anybody seen Joe?_ And then the traveler returns and they’re both happy to see each other. Totally pointless, like three-quarters of the shit they did together. Except, it was their thing, their stupid secret game that nobody else would get even if they knew about it, which they didn’t. So, there was that.

Billy went out with a woman for six months or so, on and off, who dragged him to the theatre, some stupid British thing about a pair of exes getting back together and fighting all the time and talking their heads off when they weren’t fighting or screwing. There was this thing in the play where they decided it would keep them from fighting if they had a buzzword, that if one of them said it, they both had to shut up for some amount of time. Only it didn’t work because they didn’t stick with the game.

That couple's problem was they talked too much. You don’t have to _say_ everything. Hell, most of the time Billy doesn’t say anything about anything. Joe likes to think he’s all about saying it all: truth to power, uncomfortable truth, blah blah blah. And sometimes, yeah, he does, but most of the time what comes out of his mouth is just shit and smoke. 

The point is, they both knew the rules. And they both understood the game was sacred.

* * *

There was a while, after things started going downhill, when Billy used to wish he could time-travel for real. Close his eyes and hold his breath, and go back to being friends and making music and not giving a shit about anything else. Two kids in their private world, even up there on the stage.

Then he started wondering if maybe he _was_ time-traveling. Stuck in some kind of _Groundhog Day_ infinite loop where nothing changed and nothing ever could change because they'd always been like this.

That was when he knew he had to get out. If it wasn't already too late.

* * *

It was a shitty thing for Joe to do. Hitting all the old notes of their friendship, all the stupid old jokes, all the games. Promising nothing, giving nothing, just begging, covered over with a thin gloss of bluster, bouncing like a puppy dog and expecting Billy to fall in line with one more stupid fucking doomed idea for old times’ sake. Shitty, and predictable, because that’s the thing about Joe: he never fucking changes.

That _was_ the thing.

Dead is a change, you could say.

You could also say it wasn’t really Joe’s fault, because Billy knew better. He knew better than to show up for the fucking benefit, he knew better than to stick around afterwards playing at buddies with Joe, and he sure as hell knew better than to listen to Joe’s sales pitch. He lost the game the second he bought his plane ticket to Vancouver. And Joe knew it. 

Billy didn’t want to know it. He thought. . .oh, who the hell knows what he was thinking?

The thing is.

The thing about Billy is.

The thing is, Joe refused everything Billy asked, declared it would be all his way and no fucking boundaries whatsoever, and then he asked what more Billy wanted from him. The answer should have been easy. It should have been _Nothing._ It should have been _So long._

But Billy time-traveled. He thought he was setting Joe up so he could ram the fucking point home in the way that would hurt most, the only way he could think of to get it through the shithead's steel-capped skull. He 100% meant to wait for Joe to take his turn time-traveling, the fucking predictable bastard, and then get up and walk away and leave him there. Show him there was nothing sacred left between them.

But the thing is, there was.

* * *

A week after the last Hard Core Logo concert there will ever be, Billy staggers out of the washroom still half-blind with hangover because the goddamned doorbell won’t stop ringing. He opens to the world’s most fucking persistent mail carrier, who hands him a padded envelope and asks him to sign for it. Billy grabs the package, scribbles the outline of a hand raising its middle finger on the form, and slams the door in the guy’s face.

There’s no return address on the mailer. Billy doesn’t give a shit at this point if it’s hate mail or, hell, anthrax, so he rips it open.

The only thing in the envelope is a green cocktail umbrella.

“You fucking cunt,” Billy whispers. He twirls it between his thumb and forefinger, watches the green paper blur. “Okay, fine, fucker. _Where’s Joe?_ ”


End file.
